The Boyfriend Thief Read Online Free PDF Page B

at Zac a moment longer, but then he stood and turned back to me. “We’ll talk later, Avery. You can’t hide from me forever.”
    Zac watched him leave with an amused expression on his face. “You and Elliott look like such good friends.”
    I snorted. “Sure, we are. He’s my favorite person in the entire world and I’m sure he feels exactly the same way about me.”
    Zac raised his eyebrows. “Want to talk about it?”
    I shook my head. “Definitely not. Let’s start on this project.”
    Zac pulled a notebook from his backpack and opened it on the table in front of him. “So I tried to come up with a few ideas for our business, but it’s a lot harder than I thought. All of my ideas are pretty lame.”
    “Let’s trade lists.” I turned his notebook around so I could read the list he’d made and handed over mine. “These aren’t so bad. Photography studio is good. Wait, does that say ‘dude ranch’?”
    “Yes, it does,” Zac said, grinning at me. “When I was a kid, I always wanted my own ranch. I figured this project would probably be the closest I’ll get to having one.”
    I laughed, glad that Zac took my mind off my encounter with Elliott. “I don’t know anything at all about running a ranch, even an imaginary one.”
    Zac shrugged as he looked through my list. “That’s okay. It’s supposed to be an adventure, right?” He paused a moment, then said, “Do you mind if we mark pet shop off your list? I, um, have a problem with birds. And I guess you can’t have a pet shop without birds.”
    I scrunched up my nose as I studied him. “What do you mean you have a problem with birds?”
    Zac sucked in a deep breath and then said, really fast, “Birds terrify me.”
    He squirmed in his seat under my gaze, drumming his fingers on the tabletop as I absorbed this. Around us, the noise level in the room remained a steady din as people talked and ate.
    “Birds,” I said, “ terrify you?”
    “Yeah. Like completely, absolutely scare the snot out of me.”
    “Like, regular birds? That fly around outside?” I flapped my hands around in the imitation of wings.
    “Don’t do that! Ugh.” The tips of his ears had turned a bit red. “I know it’s stupid, but I don’t like birds. With those wings flapping everywhere and those beaks waiting to peck my eyes out. And the claws .” He shuddered. “Don’t even get me started on the claws.”
    This bird phobia hadn’t quite sunk in yet. I was having trouble coming to terms with this five foot ten, one hundred and eighty pound boy being terrified of tiny one pound birds.
    “What do you do when you go outside?” I asked. “There are birds everywhere.”
    “As long as they stay in their trees or flying way up in the sky I’m fine. But I don’t want them flying at me or anywhere within ten feet of my head. I don’t go to the beach. Have you seen seagulls? They swarm and I swear all that noise they make is them deciding how best to organize and attack my head.”
    “Has a bird ever attacked you?”
    Zac ducked his head and shrugged. “Well, no. But one did poop on me when I was six. Look, I don’t know why I hate birds, I just do. I always have. You can think I’m weird or crazy or whatever. I hate birds and that’s that. I can’t deal with them.”
    “You do realize this is a hypothetical project,” I pointed out. “There won’t actually be birds involved, even if we do the pet shop as our business.”
    “I can’t even deal with hypothetical birds!” Zac exclaimed, waving his arms around as if to shoo the imaginary birds away.
    “Okay,” I told him, holding up my hands. “No hypothetical birds. No pet shop. I have an idea. Why don’t I go through your list and mark the ones I like best, and you go through mine and do the same? Then we’ll choose from the narrowed down options.”
    “Sounds like a plan,” Zac said. He seemed much calmer now that I’d agreed to no imaginary birds.
    We read through each other’s lists, marking